-1 [TELEVISION AND EDUCATION, 1991]

SMALL SCREEN SCHOOL ROOM

JOHN A. WALKER (COPYRIGHT 2009)

An article by Lord Beloff about the deficiencies of British education appeared in

The Guardian’s education section last autumn. Predictably, this article included a

ritual denunciation of television. Although the medium was deemed 'a useful

adjunct' to teaching, its overall influence was considered disastrous and it was

blamed for a decline in the reading ability of children. As always, words/books were

rated more highly than images/television. British high culture has valued literature

above the other arts for centuries. But is Dickens inherently more important than

Turner because be wrote novels instead of painting pictures? Is a banal romantic

novel more significant than a routine TV soap opera just because it is a book?

Given that television is the most powerful and popular medium of communication

of the present age, the time has come for schools to give as much emphasis to

theories of visual grammar as to theories verbal grammar. If the literacy of children

is falling, what about their ability to decode still images and sequences of images?

Perhaps that skill is increasing as a result of years of exposure to photographs,

advertising billboards, films and television? Shouldn't schools now be testing visual

literacy? This could be done via photo-montage exercises, video shooting and
editing exercises, and via essay and exam questions based on student analyses of

particular TV programmes and films.

No one would wish to deny that much of the output of television is escapist trivia,

but there are also many worthwhile programmes. Think of the plethora of

environmental series that have appeared recently. I for one feel these programmes

have deepened my knowledge of this vital subject. Think too of science series such

as Equinox, the investigative social documentaries, and the Open University arts

programmes. Some of these programmes are quite demanding. Perhaps British

children avoid serious programmes but their domestic TV diet is surely the

responsibility of parents not teachers.

Given the vividness of coloured, moving images and the time, money and research

that underpins news, documentary, art and drama programmes, it is extremely

difficult for teachers in the classroom to compete. Arguably, aside from parents,

television has become the main educator in our society. The only sensible response

seems to be for teachers to use television programmes as visual aids but also to

make the medium itself a subject for critical analysis so than its institutions,

technology and visual rhetoric can be better understood. In other words, schools

should aim to produce more informed, critical and discriminating viewers.

Presumably, this is the role of media studies departments in secondary schools.

Watching television is often characterised as a passive activity compared to

reading, but the sequences of images on television and in films involve gaps,

condensations of time, shifts of location and viewpoint, parallel narratives, etc., that

require mental work on the part of the viewer if sense is to be made of them. Again,
the relentless flow of television is said to militate against pauses for reflection and

re-reading that books permit. This charge had some validity before that advent of

the home video recorder. But now the latter enables viewers to press the pause

button and to replay programmes. Books are also said to stimulate the imagination

because the reader has to supply the images that go with the words. Is this received

wisdom correct? Are there not as many pre-digested books as TV programmes? If

someone with a feeble imagination reads a poor text then the mental experience

gained may we11 be inferior to that provided by a masterpiece of the cinema

directed by Eisenstein or Hitchcock.

Furthermore, the supposed opposition between words and images needs to be

questioned. Media such as advertising, theatre, film and television are in fact multi-

media: imagery is normally accompanied by words and, in some cases, music.

(Even many books are illustrated.) In the 1950s British children were criticised for

consuming American horror comics. Defenders of such comics pointed out that

some strips contained as many as 2000 words! Watching television may not involve

much reading but it certainly involves exposure to linguistic expression. Suppose

the worst happened and reading died out altogether. Would this mean a time

without culture? No, because there have been many cultures in the history of the

world that have been oral. In these cultures memory becomes a highly developed

faculty.

Arguably, language and images are simply two types of sign. These signs overlap

to a considerable extent. For example, metaphors and similes can be found in both,

so a study of visual signs can be just as instructive as a study of written language.

However, it is not really a question of choosing one or the other: the dominant

media of our times are multi-media therefore it is appropriate to study media in

combination. In certain instances the priority given to texts results in a distortion of

history and art: Shakespeare's plays were a form of popular live entertainment, not

pretexts for an exam.

Has the advent of television caused a decline in reading? If this really is the case

one wonders why there are now more new book titles published in Britain and the

United States annually than ever before, and why there are now so many tie-in

books of the TV series. There is evidence that television can stimulate reading: the

appearance of Kenneth Clark's 1969 Civilisation series in the United States

prompted sales of at least a million copies of his book. Since John Berger's BBC

series Ways of Seeing appeared in 1972, the paperback associated with the

programmes has sold nearly half a million copies and is still in print. Over the

decades TV has encouraged people to read about archaeology, astronomy, history

and the arts. That exposure to a mass visual medium can act as a spur to reading, I

can confirm from my own experience. I came from a working-class home where

there were no books. Popular movies viewed in the cinema were a prime source of

entertainment and learning concerning the behaviour of adults. Watching these

movies prompted me to read the novels on which they were based - I learnt who the

authors were from the title credits and then borrowed the books from the local

public library. Now watching TV and movies is a process that is paralleled by

reading texts analysing these two media. (What one can say is that technological

progress generates more and more media so the time any one individual has to
devote to any one medium may be reduced, but historical comparisons involving a

supposed golden age when everyone could read and had the time to read should

take into account such factors as social class, leisure time and life span.) I realise

that my own experience may be unrepresentative but before television is dismissed

yet again, should not some scientific research be undertaken into its impact on the

reading habits of the schoolchildren of today?

Finally, if Lord Beloff is right and television really has had a disastrous effect

on British children, then educational methods ought to be radically revised to

take account of the presence of television.

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This is a revised version of an article first published in the magazine

Independent Media, no. 108, 1991, p. 5.

John A. Walker is a painter and art historian. He is the author of several books

about art and mass media including a history of arts television in Britain.

He is also an editorial adviser for the website:

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